The Rise and Fall of the Red Death
by Nalia-R
Summary: The forgotten history of the Weasley family, one of death and terror and pureblood values. The Red Death shall rise again.


**Outtake for KodeV derived from my story** **The Other Flower** **. Told in a sort of fairy tale format because I like gruesome things and the Grimm brothers are my cuppa tea.**

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Once upon a time, when hunters still roved the land and Kings sat on their old thrones, there was magic. And where there is magic, there are definitely two things; those who wield it, and those who wield it well.

Those who merely wielded it found themselves hunted viciously. Their lines died out, lost so long ago that the sound of their name spoken today will twist the speakers tongue with its unfamiliarity. Those who wielded it well, however, well that's an entirely different story. For now, let's focus on Europe.

In Europe the magic users were revered by Kings and Queens, held in their protection and used to further their own kingdom. Many of these powerful magic users were lifted into noble status, creating their own great Houses and buying their own land where they could finally safely educate their children. They lived far apart from each other, because if they were too close a hunter may find their way in and diminish their already small population.

However there was one family that no one could seem to tame. The Weasley's.

They were the deadliest wizarding family around. Their red gold hair flashed under the sunlight as they moved in mass, a beautiful yet deadly dance of terror. Numerous, their women were known to have broods as large as nine or ten. They were trained from the moment they tore their way out of their mothers bloody wombs to be fierce fighters.

If ever someone had a massive problem they needed dealing with, all they needed to do was look for one with hair of molten lava. Some thought their freckles were marks left by nature of all the lives their family had taken, although to know the particular body count a particular individual had all you had to do was look around their necks. You'd see a necklace of human teeth taken from their victims, always the left incisor. To earn their wife or husband, the warrior had to reach a hundred.

Oh dear, where do you think the saying "gingers had no soul" came from? Look into the dead eyes of a Weasley and you might just believe it.

So many believed it, in fact, that the family came to be known as The Red Death. It was indisputable that when a family saw the wave of red, their death was soon to come.

Eventually, the world of magic was forced to separate almost completely from the non magical. The muggles had grown angry, irate. The Houses of Malfoy and Potter, among others, acted as the leaders of this new world order. A rough society was set up to protect them. Now they would really, truly, finally have their own shops and livelihoods. Now, they could live in safety.

As long as they had the Weasleys.

Though lost to history, the ghosts of that time can tell you of the red haired warriors, keeping guard over the brand new settlements. Due to their extremely volatile nature, hunters had long sought the Weasleys, killing off their kind in every way that they could. Due to this, the clan had a deep in bedded hatred of all muggles. This hatred, more than anything made them fierce protectors of the magical world.

In 942 A.D., one of their fierce and beautiful daughters Elizabeth was wedded to Septimus, and gave birth to someone who would become of the greatest wizard of all time. Salazar Slytherin.

Like his maternal family he had a deeply ingrained and natural distrust of muggleborns, and as he grew this was imply reinforced. Time and time again, he saw hunters come for them and the magical world ready to destroy everything they had, everything they worked for. What his mother lacked for in power, she made up for in exceptional skill and finesse. What his father lacked for in skill, he made up for in the fact he was one of the most powerful wizards in the land.

The best of both were manifested in Salazar. As any descendant of the Weasley family would know, the only way to get anywhere in life was hard work and bravery. As Salazar's ambition was to become the greatest there ever was, he took these family values and built himself up. He began a school with three others just as powerful as he and he rest, as they say, is history.

The Weasley family continued to prosper for years. Eventually their family grew smaller and more concentrated as pureblood families were inclined to do, but they were happy. They sent their children to school and became warriors, curse breakers, beast tamers, and explorers. A branch of their family went to the New World to help settle the brand new frontier. Even their squibs, after they stopped killing them, went on to be successful.

In every war they called for the Weasley's, and in every war they won with what was sometimes (always) a brutal outcome. Blood drenched the land and skulls littered the ground. Guts were ripped out and their skeletons were used as the decorations for their wedding dresses.

They were such a highly respected pureblood family, that in the 1930's they were named one of the Sacred 28, the list of the only families still considered 'truly pure'. The Weasley's were certainly the purest, but their reputation was about to be flung to the mud.

See, some idealistic Weasley's had developed some radical new ideas on blood purity. They believed every one was equal, muggles and muggle borns weren't a threat, and people should all live together in harmony. They contested their spot on the Sacred 28, pointing to those muggles descended from the squibs that they had tossed out.

The Weasley's were labeled blood traitors. Prominent pureblood families denounced them in the papers. People who once valued the Weasley's brash and brilliant nature were now turned against them. They didn't even have the support system of colleagues made in Slytherin, as their family had always been sorted into Gryffindor.

Septimus Weasley, one of those radicals who hadn't made his new allegiance clear to his family before he managed to make an advantageous engagement that also was for love, was disowned. In 1936, he married Cedrella Black, however immediately after he was disowned they demanded that she leave her husband, regardless of the magical repercussions and the fact that she loved him.

Cedrella stayed with him anyway, and during the Great War for the first time in history, the Weasleys fought on two opposing sides. With both sides of the family pulling exhaustively on their wealth, their account was soon drained.

Together they were strong, but divided they fell. The once numerous clan almost completely died out, and soon all that remained were Cedrella and Septimus.

They were young, idealistic. Despite the fact that they knew nothing about muggles or really much about muggleborns, despite the fact that Cedrella still had the instinctive urge to curl her lip at anything non magical and Septimus rather saw muggles as very amusing and smart animals, they wore their badge of blood traitors with pride.

It wasn't just supporting muggle rights that made them blood traitors. After all, the Longbottoms were the same and they weren't labled as pariahs of pureblood society. It was the fact that they denounced _all_ pureblood culture. They didn't come to the luncheons and they didn't set up play dates and they just...didn't.

Cedrella and Septimus taught their children everything about pureblood culture, infused with a healthy dose of hatred and disdain for anything but the most beautiful of traditions and values. Their three boys were healthy and robust. One even married distant offshoot of their family, a good girl with all of the fire of the Weasley's unfaded from her DNA.

It should go unsaid that at times the couple missed the society they came from. They missed their friends, their family, the traditions. They were lonely, which is how Cedrella explained her dreams at night.

The dreams of a fiery red headed woman who wore a snake around her arm made of gold. Who wore a necklace of teeth and and stood in front of a thousand of her kin. The woman who smiled at her and said;

 _The Glory of The Red Death shall rise again_

And no matter how many times the woman tried to get the prophecy out of her head, this one line continuously ran through her head.

When Cedrella told Septimus of these dreams, he held her tight to his chest and whispered to her it would be alright. They tried to erase what they were, and where they came from, but there were some things that were a part of them that just wouldn't go away.

Madness and fire and destiny. Love and family and magic. These were them and them were these.

One night, seemingly possessed, Cedrella wrote down the prophecy in her journal and put it away to be discovered later by one of her decedents.

The Weasley's would be warriors again.

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 **Well then that's that. This turned out a bit different than I thought it would be, but whatever. The next real chapter will be posted on Wednesday, and whoever wins the challenge will get an outtake of their own.**

 **Bye!**


End file.
